When is a good time to ask?

Fifty years ago, in the July 4, 1976 edition of The Star-News, the newspaper’s editorial column expressed a desire to momentarily keep its mouth shut. Look the other way.

“There was a time, not long ago, when statistics showing relative wealth in the United States would have set us rushing to our typewriter to declaim about the gross inequities in American society.

But not today.

There was a time, not long ago, when continued revelations about the depredations of the FBI and CIA would have set us to writing about how Americans may have been less free than they thought.

But not today.”

Actually, today I quibble.

I realize the opinion was expressed on the occasion of this country’s bicentennial. I appreciate the desire to read the room, to not be a birthday party pooper.

But there comes a time when we must recognize that birthdays and anniversaries are occasions when we should take stock of where we have been, where we are and where we are going. Have the choices we made led to growth and progress, or have we stagnated?

Regressed?

Fifty years ago we had a larger, albeit struggling, middle class. Today the working men and women who punch clocks, fill in time sheets and hustle multiple gig jobs are slipping further and further behind the top 1 percent of households in this country that hold more than 30 percent of this country’s wealth.

While young people struggle to pay rent or afford a home purchase, children in poverty lose SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) benefits and seniors fret over the rising cost of healthcare as cuts to Medicare loom, the world saw an American citizen—an immigrant—become the first trillionaire.

Two hundred and fifty years after this country was founded the gap between the haves and the have-nots persists. It widens. We send kids to sleep hungry and unsheltered while at the same time we lionize the uber wealthy and coddle them with tax breaks.

If 50 years ago on the occasion of this country’s 200th birthday was not the right time to ask if the United States of America has lived up to its potential, is it acceptable to ask now?